Shiloh, 1862 (8 page)

There was barely time to process this deflating reply when one of two companies Appler had sent out earlier to check on the picket line returned with a report that “the Rebels out there are thicker than fleas on a dog’s back.” Appler ordered his men to load up and form in a line of battle. It was about this time that Sherman’s party appeared in Rhea’s field in front of Appler’s position and the general halted to take out his spyglass and begin studying what appeared to be a large body of enemy troops marching diagonally across the south end of the field half a mile away.

Someone in Appler’s regiment suddenly glimpsed a line of Rebel skirmishers
⁵
emerge from the brush close by on Sherman’s right, opposite from the direction he was looking; they halted and raised their weapons to aim. A warning was shouted out but not in time. Sherman started and threw up his hands before his face,
exclaiming, “My God, we are attacked!” An instant later the flash and crash of fire from the Rebel volley killed Sherman’s orderly right next to him—blew him off his horse and onto his back on the ground spouting blood. Sherman himself was struck in the hand, apparently from buckshot, then wheeled his horse with the rest of his staff, dashing away from the field, yelling to Appler as he passed by, “Hold your position, I will support you.”

At the Cherry mansion in Savannah, nine miles downriver, Ulysses S. Grant was just sitting down to breakfast when an ill-omened boom reverberated from somewhere upstream on the Tennessee River. Perhaps the most lucid description of Grant at this weighty juncture in his career was given 31 years later when Mrs. W. H. Cherry, mistress of the house where Grant was staying, replied to a question posed by one T. M. Hurst, assistant postmaster of Nashville; their exchange was ultimately published in the February 1893 issue of the
Confederate Veteran
.

“Dear Sir—Your letter of inquiry concerning ‘Gen. Grant’s physical condition on the morning the battle of Shiloh began,’ is received. You will please accept my assurance, gladly given, that on the date mentioned I believe Gen. Grant was thoroughly sober. He was at my breakfast table when he heard the report from a cannon. Holding, untasted, a cup of coffee, he paused in conversation to listen a moment at the report of another cannon. He hastily arose, saying to his staff officers, ‘Gentlemen, the ball is in motion; let’s be off.’ His flagship (as he called his special steamboat) was lying at the wharf, and in fifteen minutes he, staff officers, orderlies, clerks, and horses had embarked.”

While her husband remained loyal to the Union, Mrs. Cherry (née Annie Irwin) was a staunch supporter of the rebellion, and in fact had a brother in the Confederate cavalry. While she evidently loathed the notion of Yankee officers in her home, she was much taken, even then, with Grant’s character and his “magnanimity,” as she put it. The question of Grant’s sobriety, at Shiloh and elsewhere, dogged him even to the grave—and beyond it—as evinced by the inquiry Mrs. Cherry received. It has also dogged historians from that day to this, especially those who do not wish to admit their idols might have feet of clay. But this day in southwest Tennessee was shaping up to be the most trying ever of Grant’s long and illustrious military career, and one thing for certain is that a drunkard could never have made his way through it.

U
LYSSES
G
RANT IS A CAPTIVATING MILITARY STUDY
, if for no other reason than he had earned a reputation as the most unmilitary-looking officer in the army. He often dressed in a plain blue suit and a gray felt hat, prompting one wag to suggest that he looked like a streetcar conductor. On those occasions when he wore a uniform he usually put on a plain private’s tunic unadorned except for his insignia of rank—the gold braid, sashes, and epaulettes he left to French admirals and the like—and sometimes he was even mistaken for a man of the ranks. He was 39 years old when the war started, of medium height and slender build, and his manner was taciturn and unpretentious. In fact there was little in his bearing or his upbringing to suggest that he was destined for greatness, except perhaps for the piercing gaze in his blue eyes, which, only later, was interpreted as a determination to succeed. He was an American of his day, with both the strengths and weakness
of the American character. Low-keyed, enigmatic, he often frustrated his staff by not communicating his intentions before issuing major battle orders. He was an unusual man, a gifted man, sometimes he was mysterious; perhaps he was a puzzle even to himself.

To those who knew him young, it was a wonder that he accomplished anything at all; to a nation that ultimately worshipped him it remained a wonder how, in the space of a decade, he rose from failed soldier, unsuccessful farmer, hardscrabble wood peddler, lack-luster store clerk, and notorious drunkard to the most celebrated military hero of the age and President of the United States. In fact, the most remarkable thing about Grant was that, by all accounts, he was so
unremarkable
.

Grant’s father, Jesse, was a tannery worker in Point Pleasant, Ohio, when Grant was born on April 27, 1822. Over time, Jesse worked his way up to start his own tannery and slaughterhouse, and in later years he owned a leather goods store and haberdashery. In the meantime he dabbled in local politics and was acknowledged about town as a kind of self-educated know-it-all, widely read in everything from the classics to contemporary politics. He frequently bombarded local newspapers with abolitionist-style editorial letters, though such sentiments never rubbed off on Grant. What
did
rub off on him from those early years, however, was a lifelong revulsion at the sight of blood, in consequence of frequent exposure to his father’s tanning operations. In fact, he was unable to eat even a rare-cooked piece of meat and always ordered his “charred gray.”

As a baby, Grant went unnamed for a month before the family selected as a middle name Ulysses—after the fabulous Greek hero who conquered Troy by hiding his soldiers inside a giant wooden
horse—by drawing choices out of a hat. In homage to Grant’s mother, Hannah, they selected as a first name Hiram, after the biblical king who built the temple of Solomon, which made Grant’s initials H.U.G. and set him up for a bit of consternation down the road.

During the languid years of the 1830s about the only thing Grant seemed interested in were horses, with which he appeared to share some kind of hidden understanding. His equestrianship led people to remark that in the saddle Grant seemed “as one” with his horse. At the age of six he earned money using his father’s horses to haul brush for his neighbors and by his teens he was breaking and training horses for sale and had set up carriage teams to take passengers to nearby towns.

When Grant reached his teens his father began trying to secure for him a West Point education on grounds that the young man was beginning to show an aptitude for mathematics—about the only thing that interested him aside from horses—but more important, because it was free. A congressional appointment came in due time, and Grant entered the United States Military Academy in 1839 at the age of 17. Before he left, Grant’s cousins carved his initials into his luggage, but for some reason Grant decided he had had enough of H.U.G. He promptly reversed his first and second names to become Ulysses Hiram Grant, which lasted only until he arrived at “the gray castle” on the Hudson, whereupon an adjutant supervising admissions noted that he had been nominated as Ulysses
Simpson
Grant—Simpson being his mother’s maiden name. In typical army fashion it was put to Grant that he would either become Ulysses Simpson Grant or board a steamer back downriver, never to see West Point again. Thus the legend of U. S. Grant was born, and in time his friends began calling him Sam, after “Uncle Sam.”

From the beginning, Grant was an indifferent student. He nearly flunked French and languished in the library reading romantic fiction, at one point writing home, “I do love the place, it seems as though I could live here forever if my friends would only come too.” He did make one friend, Fred Dent of Missouri, who would have a lasting impact on his life, but he excelled only in math and drawing, barely getting by in other subjects. He could not have known it then, of course—none of them could—but the acquaintances and friendship of those days would furnish the cream of the officer corps of the Civil War, including Union generals William Tecumseh Sherman, George B. McClellan, Don Carlos Buell, John Pope, George Thomas, and William Rosecrans, as well as the Confederate generals James Longstreet, George Pickett, and Thomas (“Stonewall”) Jackson.

Despite Grant’s lackadaisical academic performance, as a West Point equestrian he was peerless. To see him riding, said one student, was “to watch a circus,” and he set a record for the equestrian high jump at West Point that would stand for the next 25 years.

In 1843 Grant graduated in the bottom half of his class and was stuck in the infantry because the elite Corps of Engineers would not have him and there was no room in the cavalry. He received a further humiliation when he went home to Ohio on leave before reporting to his first post. He had put on his fancy new uniform only to learn that people were making fun of him because of his clothes. It seems to have been a seminal moment for him with regard to military dress. As his biographer Brooks Simpson put it, “The new brevet second lieutenant never liked wearing a
full-dress uniform. The memory of being laughed at … never quite faded away.”

That autumn Grant reported to the Fourth U.S. Infantry Regiment at Jefferson Barracks, which was near St. Louis and the home of his West Point roommate Fred Dent, who happened to have a sister, Julia, just returned from boarding school, who “was possessed of a lively and pleasing countenance,” according to one observer. Grant promptly became fascinated with her. The Dents were well-to-do slaveholders who kept a large plantation in the country in addition to their fashionable town house in St. Louis. Before long, Grant and Julia were riding together over the 1,200 acres of White Haven, which had been built by her father, “Colonel” Fredrick Dent—after which the young lieutenant and the old “colonel” would often engage in spirited though affable conversations over what had now become the overarching topic of the day: the future of African slavery.